


A thing on mother's milk and kisses fed

by SweetPollyOliver



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: (but not what you're thinking), Alien Biology, Alien Character(s), Communication Failure, Established Relationship, F/M, Lactation, Lactation Kink, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pregnancy, Weird Biology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-15 06:17:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8045536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPollyOliver/pseuds/SweetPollyOliver
Summary: As soon as Ezri gets anything figured out things instantly get more complicated.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celestialskiff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialskiff/gifts).



> Written for Round 3 of the Trek Rarepair Swap. Only the first chapter, because life happened in a big way this month; a thousand apologies to celestialskiff! 
> 
> Currently unbetaed - all mistakes are my own

"Oh!" 

The universe retained plenty of surprises whether you were in your early twenties or getting close to four centuries and few people could appreciate this more than Ezri Dax.

"Huh," she said, looking down at her naked torso. 

"Huh?" Quark looked up from between her legs. "That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. I mean I thought I was doing pretty well a second ago, but we went from rapturous moaning to 'Oh!' to 'Huh' in a very short time and- oh, huh."

The underside of her breasts all down to the top of her ribs was damp with some sort of milky fluid that had, at a fairly key moment… come out of her. 

"That's new," Quark said. "Is this a Trill thing?" 

"I don't know," Ezri replied. 

She continued to frown at her breasts and reached down to squeeze her left nipple experimentally. At the stimulation more of the fluid expelled itself, more slowly this time. Her nipples were tender and her breasts ached--they'd been pretty sore for a few days, actually, but she'd figured that she was probably coming up on her period or something and hadn't thought much more about it. 

She looked down at Quark's face again to see his eyes fixed on her nipple, which was still pinched between her fingers and slightly red and abused looking. She dropped her hand and started to tug at a ruck in the bedsheet beside her. 

"Sorry, I know, it's pretty gross. I'm just- this is a new one on me." 

"No, no," Quark waved off her statement. "Not gross. It's just… interesting. And besides, come on, you were two knuckles deep in my ear canal yesterday; if anyone has the monopoly on the intersection of gross bodily phenomena and sexual arousal in this relationship it's me." 

"Right," she smiled nervously.

"But this has really never happened before?" Quark said. 

"Never when I wasn't breastfeeding or _very_ pregnant," said the Dax part of her without filtering through the Ezri part at all. 

She brought the damp tips of her fingers up to her mouth and sucked on them. Quark's gaze stayed locked on her mouth. 

"It doesn't taste bad," she said and then suddenly blushed. "I mean, it just tastes like normal breast milk, I don't think I have an infection or anything. But I still don't know what could have caused it."

Secondhand memories that didn't quite fit blurred in her head with half remembered descriptions of various medical conditions that didn't quite fit and she brought her hands up to her temples anxiously. 

"I think I should go to see Julian about it," she said finally around a bitten bottom lip. 

Quark, who had been known to work with temperatures high enough to fry an egg, nodded earnestly. "Your health is so important." 

*

Technically she could have gone to see Dr. Girani, but, as awkward as it was seeing her ex-boyfriend in a medical context, it was a little less awful getting stripped to the waist for someone who had actually seen her in a similar state of undress before. 

"I mean I'm not too worried about it," she said, talking at approximately warp six. Julian was quiet for an ominously long seeming time as he looked at his tricorder so she rushed again to fill the gap in conversation. "I mean, these things are usually just some kind of a hormonal imbalance right? And between the symbiont and the host I have plenty of hormones that can interact with each other in a screwy way." 

Julian looked up at her finally and she realised, with horror, that he had his 'breaking the news' face on. 

"What is it?" she said. "It's a tumour?" 

"No, no, don't worry," Julian said, and put his hands on her upper arms for a second before removing them a little awkwardly. "It's nothing sinister. But it is big."

"How big? Will I need surgery? Will I have to take time off? Oh I really wish I didn't have to land this in Benjamin's lap just a week after he's back in linear ti-"

"I think!" Julian interrupted her verbal train of thought quickly. "I think maybe I've unintentionally been a little alarmist, I'm sorry. I meant it's big news. You're--I mean, that is to say, the Dax symbiont--is pregnant." 

She sat still for several long seconds. 

There really were still curveballs after nine lifetimes. 

Pregnant wasn't exactly the right word for it. Symbionts usually mated with each other and laid their eggs in the Caves of Mak'ala prior to being joined or, occasionally, in a gap between hosts, but _technically_ they could also inseminate their own eggs and incubate them inside their bodies while they were joined with a host. This was… uncommon, to say the least. 

Another distinction that Ezri Dax could have done without, honestly. 

From what little she knew about it, when this happened it tended to cause a lot of crossed wires and confusions in the host's body. 

Spontaneous lactation could end up being the least of her problems. 

She could only hope that the effects would restrain themselves to unusual and/or unpleasant bodily responses, because she really didn't want to go through the full spectrum of emotional and psychological upheaval that _conventional_ pregnancy had caused Lela and Audrid. 

And this wasn't even getting into the dozens of tiny new lives that would be growing inside her, who wouldn't be able to join with her, but whose developing brains would reach out with immature telepathic impulses and brush against hers more and more as they matured. That couldn't be anything but enormously disconcerting. 

When the eggs were close to being ready to hatch, she'd probably have to go to the homeworld and find a surgeon who specialised in this very very small field to remove them and then they'd be taken to the Caves and she'd… go back to DS9 and try not to think about her babies being light years away and that she'd never see them again in this life. 

For all that they'd be the cause of considerable upheaval and stress, she couldn't imagine that she wouldn't love them and that it wouldn’t be hard to know she’d only maybe see _some_ of them again, maybe decades or centuries from now. 

The one comfort was that even if she had gone through the initiates' programme she probably wouldn't be much more prepared than she was now. Cases like this were so rare.

In the back of her head she thought that she should really write a paper on this. At the thought of it she felt suddenly space sick in a way that she hadn't for months. 

Julian was very understanding about the vomit. 

*

"Well… good news is you're not sick?" Quark said. 

"Yeah," she slumped across the bar and leaned facedown against it. 

"Ooh, I wouldn't do that." Quark lifted her head gently to slide a coaster underneath her forehead. "Morn spilled half of his Tellarian maggot stew earlier and I haven't had a chance yet to do much more about it than wipe the bar down a bit." 

"That's fine," said Ezri, who hadn't anything left to throw up no matter what her stomach thought. "I'm just going to stay here for a while until the world makes sense."

"Well let me know when that happens," Quark replied. "I have a few business ventures that'll start earning significant profit once the world makes sense." 

"When they do will you buy me something shiny?" Ezri turned her head to one side and looked up at Quark. 

"Ezri, on that day I will buy you not one but many shiny things," Quark said. "So many shiny things that people will start to talk." 

She folded her arms on the slightly sticky bar and moved her cheek to rest against her crossed forearms. 

"That'd be nice. Do you think it'll take long before the world starts making sense? Because now that I've thought about it a bit more I'm not sure I want to stay this up close and personal with the grease stain from Morn's lunch for too much longer."

"Can't be long," Quark said. "Cruel random happenstance has had it too good for too long, it's due for a loss." 

"What odds would you give on it happening in the next thirty seconds?" she asked and Quark laughed and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. 

"Let's wait and see."

Beside her Morn sighed gustily and rolled his eyes.

"Can you come over for dinner at my quarters tonight?" she asked and his face seemed to flicker briefly.

"I don't know, it looks like we're going to be swamped," Quark replied finally after a pause that was half a second too long. "I'll try to, but no promises."

"Okay," she said, a little disappointed but not enough to press him. "It’s probably not a bad idea for me to get an early meal anyway. I’m eating for, what, ninety now?" 

"Yeah," Quark said quickly, either missing or ignoring the joke. "So, maybe we’ll take a rain check and do something tomorrow?"

"Rain check," she agreed and gave him a quick kiss before getting up to leave. 

Her stomach was beginning to feel unsettled again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh, sorry for the late update. This is why I shouldn't post things chapter by chapter. Also I've re-written this considerably from my first draft, so we may be going off road as this story progresses in terms of following my original plan. So... here's hoping that comes off.

Quark wasn’t able to get away from the bar to see her that night. Or the next night. Or the night after that. 

She’d gone to have lunch with him on both of the following days, but it had amounted to less of a bonding experience and more eating sandwiches at the bar and going over some patient files while he raced around discovering new urgent things to be done. 

He’d managed to come over the next night, but he’d basically fallen asleep sitting up while they were still eating dinner and when she started to help him up and walk him towards her bed, he’d roused himself enough to make his excuses and go home, saying that he was afraid he’d oversleep if he stayed the night. 

And it was fine that he was busy! Sometimes she got busy, it happened. She didn’t need for them to be in each other’s pockets all the time. And she hadn’t expected him to make _extra_ time to see her because she was going through something or anything. But increasingly it felt like he was taking every excuse to avoid her.

She missed him. 

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but her wrist was beginning to hurt—she'd always had trouble getting off by herself and now with her hormones going crazy she was so horny she was almost seeing double. She hadn't said anything though, because, sheer libido aside, she couldn't help but worry that he was making all these excuses so that he could avoid sleeping with her, however nice he'd been about it before.

She hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to ask and be proven right yet, but there were any number of potential reasons why he wouldn't find her attractive now. The simplest explanation was that maybe he was uncomfortable having sex with her while she was “pregnant” because of some kind of cultural taboo or personal squeamishness. 

And beyond that, a lot of non-Trill found joining pretty unpleasant to think about in too close detail; maybe he did too and had just pushed it down and tried to think of her as just being her host body, but the thought of the Dax symbiont incubating its juvenile offspring inside that host body had made that impossible and he was too repulsed to see her as a sexual partner anymore. 

Or, well, maybe he was just grossed out by the thought that she might leak on him. 

As much as these possibilities didn’t make her feel particularly attractive, it would be worse if Quark really thought that he had to _avoid_ her in order to get out of having sex with her and that he couldn’t just say he didn’t want to. 

Which, now that she thought about it, seemed exactly like something he would think. As bad as he had been in the past about respecting other people’s boundaries, he had never been hypocritical about it—he was more than capable of applying his own horrifying standards to himself and had an equally bad time of telling how not okay it was in those instances. He’d told her some things about his apprenticeship as lighthearted anecdotes that had made her want to write him a referral to a trauma counsellor. 

When he finally was able to have her over for dinner later in the week, she decided to take the Denebian slime devil by the horns.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” she asked.

His spoon hit the side of his bowl too hard with a clang and half his soup sloshed onto the table. 

“Right now?” he asked.

“No!” she covered her face with her hands. “I mean more like… in general? Because it’s okay if you don’t! Tobin was terrified of having sex with his wife when she was pregnant, even though he _remembered_ being pregnant and being pissed off by Lela’s husband thinking he might hurt the baby if he slept with her. And… if it’s for some other reason, that’s okay too. You don’t even have to give me a reason if you don’t want to. You won’t hurt my feelings, it’s okay.”

Her feelings would most definitely be hurt, but Quark wasn’t quite ready for the idea of it being okay to have firm boundaries even when it hurt people who he felt beholden to. Or that dating someone wasn’t the same as being beholden to them, for that matter. 

“I do!” Quark said hurriedly. “Of course I do!” 

“Are you sure, because I don’t want you to think that you have to say that if it’s not how you really feel-”

“Do you not want to have sex with me?” Quark said. His voice had taken on an adversarial tone. “Because you don’t need to try and trick me into thinking that I don’t like you anymore if you want to break up with me.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Ezri said. “I don’t want to break up with you and I’ve wanted to have sex with you _all week_ but you kept avoiding me, so I thought that you just were afraid that if you spent time with me you’d be obliged to even though you didn’t want to.” 

“I wasn’t _avoiding_ you!” Quark said.

“When I went to see you at lunch you nearly had me thrown out when I tried to eat food I hadn’t bought at the bar,” she said. 

“And then I _bought_ you a sandwich.” Quark said. “It wasn’t anything personal. If I let you eat food you got in the Replimat in the bar, then everyone will think it’s okay and I’ll not just be losing money to the Replimat, but I’ll be losing space for paying customers.”

“I don’t want to have to be a customer to see you,” Ezri said. “If I have to buy your time then what am I supposed to think about how much you want to see me? All I want to know is what the problem is, so that we can fix it if that’s possible.” 

“Why are we going from me having a busy week to you having to buy time to see me? And, again, I bought the sandwich, so if anything I was paying to spend time with you.”

“Come on, Quark, you just suddenly get so busy you can’t see me for a week right after I found out about the eggs, when you’d been moving your schedule around so that we could spend the night with each other at least every other night for the four months we’ve been together and I’m supposed to believe it was a complete coincidence?” 

“Yes!” Quark said. “That’s exactly what you’re supposed to believe, because it _was_ a coincidence—this is a very busy time of the year and I can’t keep leaving Broik in charge to take time off.” 

“Oh ha,” Ezri said.

“Ha?” Quark said with an edge in his voice.

“Ha! And if I’m too much of an opportunity cost then-” All of a sudden the fight went out of her. “You know what, I think I should go.” 

“Well then go,” Quark said. 

And she did.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A space millennials interlude

She couldn't face going back to her quarters and being totally alone with her thoughts there, so she left the habitat ring and went down to the Promenade.

It was late enough that there were only a scant handful of night shift workers when Ezri slouched into the Replimat—she wasn't really hungry, but she replicated a scone for appearance's sake. All she could do with it was pull it apart bit by bit with anxious fingers.

After a few minutes of solitary scone mutilation she saw Jake Sisko walk in and replicate a cup of raktijino big enough to drown a good sized vole in.

Jake noticed her and waved before walking over.

“Hey, can I join you?” he asked and she gestured to the empty seat across from her and pushed out the chair with her foot. “I thought you had a date tonight? Did the bar get busy again or something?”

She scowled and squashed the small piece of scone in her hand into a little disc no thicker than a sheet of paper.

“Something like that,” she said. “We had a fight.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“Eh,” she waved her hand from one side to the other. “I don't know. And, honestly, I don't know that I should really tell you, it's a bit….”

“What, is it grown up stuff?” Jake smiled, flashing his dimples. “Tell me when I'm older, that kind of thing? Some time between a year and three centuries from now?”

“You know what? Maybe, yeah,” she said, before sticking her tongue out. “But no it's just… it involves more about my sex life than I think you'd want to hear about, given that I did used to be like a… uncle figure to you.”

“I can promise you that you are a thousand times more appropriate and conscious of boundaries than Curzon would be if he were still alive,” Jake shrugged. “But if _you_ aren't comfortable talking about it that's fine too.”

Ezri screwed up her face and considered it for a moment.

“Okay,” she said finally. “The family friendly version is that it was a communication problem. I was feeling really… um, needy, but I was trying not to get my feelings all over him while I was attempting to figure out what _he_ wanted. And then he got all defensive and accused me of wanting to break up with him and then I kind of lashed out about feeling, I don't know, neglected or whatever and it all kind of just… fell apart.”

“Sounds bad,” Jake grimaced.

“Yeah,” Ezri agreed with a sigh. “Actually I think we might have broken up, but the words weren't actually said, so I don't know for sure.”

“Yikes,” Jake said. “So did you come straight here?”

“Yeah…” she said. “I guess I'm half hoping that he'll be so depressed that he'll go down the bar on some urgent middle of the night errand that'll take him away from his feelings and then he'll see me here and we can talk it out. But then I'm also half hoping that he goes to my quarters to try and find me and that I won't be there and he'll feel even more miserable. But I guess I have to go back there eventually. I just kind of don't want to be alone and stew for now, I suppose.”

“Well, why don't you stay over at mine and Nog's?” Jake offered. “The same basic idea works. Either he'll get so depressed that he'll want to spend time with his only remaining family on the station to talk about what an idiot he is and you'll be there and the two of you can talk or if he goes to your quarters you won't be there and he'll be alone with thoughts of what a fool he's been.”

“That's really nice of you to offer,” she said. “But… are you sure it's okay? I mean don't feel like you have to, just because you sat down next to me and I happened to have drama going on.”

“Come on, Dax,” he said lightly. “Of course it's okay, you're family.”

She felt her stomach twist with what was either anxiety or tender emotion or maybe both with a little guilt tossed in for kicks, but before she could analyze it fully Jake continued.

“Besides, playing hooky with you sounds more fun than going back to the short story I'm trying to write. Maybe if I just leave my work alone long enough the fairies will finish writing it for me this time.”

“Well I guess if I'm assisting with a first contact mission then I should,” Ezri said.

“Dad always said that it’s the foremost responsibility of any Starfleet officer,” Jake agreed and stood up, offering her his arm.

*

When Nog walked through his front door he was surprised into a standstill.

“What is this!” he demanded, pointing at his roommate and his uncle's girlfriend accusingly.

“It's quite obviously a fort,” Jake said, while continuing to plump pillows without even looking up.

Shameless.

“And what are the two of you doing in it?” Nog said. He crossed his arms and looked down at them from the strange vantage point of being taller for once.

“Jake's avoiding his story and I'm avoiding your uncle,” Ezri said.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Jake, having straightened up from leaning all over the human boy when Nog came in, and she was fiddling with the tassel of a cushion Nog didn't remember owning. He rolled his eyes.

“I see,” he said. “Well I can only hope I handle my problems as maturely as you two when I grow up. Now if you'll both excuse me, I have a report to write.”

“Oh come on,” Jake said, tossing a cushion in the general direction of his head. Nog caught it. “Are you going to pretend you're too mature for us like a child or are you going to get in the fort like a man?”

“I’m writing a report,” Nog repeated pointedly.

“So write it in the fort,” Ezri said. “We won't distract you, we've just been reading in here.”

Resistance, it seemed, was futile.

*

Three hours later the fort had been rebuilt under Nog's direction so that it would fit the three of them better, not to mention be more structurally sound and defensible from enemy forces.

In addition to fifteen extra cushions, three extra sheets and four support poles, they had replicated some fairy lights to read by so they could reduce the main lighting in the room for atmosphere. 

Time would only tell if the lights would help to coax any fiction writing fairies out.

Lying down between Jake and Nog after they'd turned the main lights all the way off to sleep, Erzi felt a profound sense of dissonance.

In one sense she'd changed Jake's diapers and dandled him on her knee. In another, very real, sense he was just one year younger than her. And similarly, Nog was simultaneously her colleague, someone equal to her in rank who was actually a year _older_ than her and then someone who she'd watched with pride grow from wayward youth to promising young officer and who she might hypothetically someday consider a nephew.

Although, granted, this possibility was getting more hypothetical all the time, she thought a little glumly.

The symbiont's broodiness was making her inclined to feel maternal and fondly condescending towards them while at the same time the terrified humanoid part of her felt almost like _their_ child, small and hiding between them from a bad dream.

She glowed and cowered with equal intensity.

The ambivalence made it a little hard to even think about sleep, but she must have drifted off some time because the next she knew she was waking up curled around Jake's back and Nog was gone.

She could hear whispering outside the fort and sat up to go out and investigate, but Nog appeared back at the sheet shrouded entrance and waved her back and climbed in after her.

She wanted to ask if it had been Quark, but instead found herself saying, “What time is it?”

“About 0500,” Nog whispered back.

“I probably won't be able to get back to sleep,” Ezri said. “I should head back to my quarters and just start getting ready for the day.”

“Well have some breakfast at least,” Nog crawled back out of the fort again and she followed him. “We'll have to eat in my quarters so as not to wake Jake.”

“You've both gone to enough trouble for me already, just climb back into bed with Jake,” she said and then walked into Nog's back when he stopped right in front of her. “Or your own bed, obviously, I mean-”

“No it's fine,” he said, cutting her off. “I can't go back to sleep once I'm up either.”

They made their way to the replicator and got a couple of bowls of gruesomely nourishing porridge as quietly they could, before continuing to shuffle into Nog's soundproofed quarters, where they blinked at the full light.

“You working this morning?” Nog asked her when they sat down at the small table in his room, not really big enough for two, to eat.

“This afternoon,” she said. “I'd say I could keep myself busy with paperwork, but I'm all caught up since I haven't been able to see Quark all week. But it's okay, it's not like a morning off is an imposition. You?”

“I have the day off,” he said.

“Well aren't we a credit to academy training?” she said and laughed a little weakly at her own joke. “Neither of us have work in the morning and we're up before the night shift gets off.”

They sat in silence for a second.

“Say… Nog?” she said and winced internally.

“Say, Ezri?” he replied.

“Was that Quark at the door just now?” she said, tipping her head down and to the side, sliding away from eye contact. Nog sighed.

“Yeah. I sent him away because I didn't want to set a precedent for allowing him into my quarters in the middle of the night in floods of tears. And I figured I wouldn't be doing you a favour waking you up to talk to him in your pyjamas.”

“Well, your pyjamas.” Ezri corrected him. “And thanks for the loan, by the way.”

He waved off her thanks one handed. “It's fine. The preset patterns in the replicator aren't very comfortable if you have sensitive skin.”

“Yeah, I hear you. I'm very sensitive right now. Being 'pregnant' is really doing a number on my body. Actually-” she lifted the front of her borrowed pyjamas forward from the hem and frowned the damp patches on her chest. “Yeah, I'll... wash these before I give them back to you.”

“It's okay,” Nog said.

“Thanks,” Ezri replied. “And thanks for not telling Quark I was here. I wouldn't have been ready to talk to him just after I woke up.”

“No problem,” Nog said. They sat in silence for another little while.

“I'm going to talk to him today though,” she said, a little too urgently.

“You don't have to explain anything; it's none of my business,” he said. “If anything my uncle could do with the silent treatment from women every so often.”

“Right,” she replied.

It was a little awkward being alone with Nog without Jake.

Between having been his therapist and dating his uncle she felt like there was a layer of unearned intimacy between them that was more than a little uncomfortable.

And this was without bringing in Jadzia's memories, and her own cognitive dissonance provoking editorialising of them, to muddy the issue.

She wasn't sure why exactly things were so much easier with Jake. Maybe it was because she'd reconnected with the Siskos so soon after being joined, or maybe it was because Jake wasn't her work colleague, or maybe it was because Jadzia had inherited memories of Jake just as much as she had.

But maybe she was overthinking things and it was just _this_ set of circumstances that was making things awkward. She could hardly expect things to be totally tension free considering Quark was Nog's family and she'd apparently made him cry.

“By the way I'm sorry about that maturity quip yesterday,” Nog said and she started a little in surprise. “The Divine Exchequer knows that I'm not anyone to talk about avoiding discussions about relationships.”

All of a sudden Ezri thought she knew why Nog had seemed so shocked in the split second after he'd arrived home and found her sprawled on his floor lounging against Jake's shoulder and it wasn't _just_ family loyalty.

She had a rush of sympathy for Nog that broke past the awkwardness.

“Nog, you know he loves you, right?” she said. He looked up at her, his turn now to be surprised, but then he just laughed once under his breath and leaned back in his chair.

“Yeah… I do,” he replied. “But I also know he loves Kasidy, and Colonel Kira, and his dad, and, for that matter, _you_. He's so…” 

Nog lifted his hand up and waved it around as if to search for the words.

“Jake isn't a Ferengi,” Nog said finally. “He's never felt ashamed of expressing his feelings for people whether it benefitted him materially or not. I think if he did have feelings… other than friendship for me, he'd have said something.”

“I don't think it's that straightforward,” Ezri said. “Even if he’s not ashamed, he could be nervous. You've been friends for a long time, you live together, he doesn't know how you feel… there's lots of reasons why he might not say anything. Or at least hasn't said anything _yet_ —for all you know he's working up his nerve.”

“Well,” Nog said. “I guess I'm not happy enough with my odds to risk everything I have already.”

“Even if he didn't feel the same way, he still cares about you. I don't think you'd be risking your friendship if you said anything,” Ezri said. “But I won't push you.”

“Thanks,” Nog said quietly. “For… talking to me about it, I mean. It’s been hard not having anyone to tell. It’s not very Ferengi, but I’ve gotten used to having Jake to talk to about this kind of stuff, but now since… well, you know. It’s not something I can really talk to Jake about.”

“It's fine,” she said. “If you ever want to talk about it some more, I'm, y'know, around. As a friend.”

“I might take you up on that,” Nog said. He sighed and then looked down at his bowl. “Love stinks, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Ezri said. “Love stinks.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can only run away from facing things for so long

“You don't want to know,” Ezri repeated firmly to Julian, who was sitting across from her at the Replimat. 

“Just because we've broken up doesn't mean that I don't care about you,” he replied. “And I'm not just jumping at the chance to pick holes in your new relationship—I like being friends!” 

“Julian,” Ezri said. “When I'm saying that you don't want to know, I don't mean 'we have to much history for this to be comfortable' or 'the two of us getting together again would be a bad idea' what I mean is that you don't want to know.” 

“I don't see why it's such a big secret,” he said a little mulishly. 

“Well maybe I don't want to tell you,” she said, with a molecule of snappishness entering her tone. “Is that a good enough reason for it to be a big secret?” 

“Who's got a secret?”

Benjamin Sisko was sliding into the seat next to Julian. The eyes of every Bajoran at the Replimat was fixed at their table. Ezri could hear the faint sounds of prayers being whispered. 

She gritted her teeth. 

“Quark and I are having a fight and if I don't have sex I'm going to explode!” she said, loud enough for her voice to carry. 

If she had been hoping to shock the more religious Bajorans who'd been following Benjamin's every move with their eyes out of eavesdropping, she was unsuccessful. If anything, the attention focused on their table became all the more rapt. 

Benjamin's face was carefully blank, but she thought that she could see the laugh he wasn't letting out shining through in his eyes. 

“It's safe to to assume that the two are unrelated, I suppose?” he asked finally. 

“No, they're very much related. The person who I'm not having sex with right now is Quark. Well, I mean, technically I'm not having sex with anyone right now, but the person who I _would_ be having sex with if I weren't not having sex would be him,” Ezri said, and she hoped Vedek Gaden was enjoying herself. “But he got all weird when I found out I was expecting Dax-lets and then when I called him on it he pretended like I was making it all up. And, consequently, we're not talking to each other and I haven't had an orgasm in eight days aaaand maybe six hours.”

“I think I have something that needs seeing to in the infirmary, excuse me,” Julian said, knocking a fork off the table in his haste to get away. She'd been right: he hadn't wanted to know.

“I tried to tell you,” Ezri called after his retreating back. She turned back to Benjamin. “Oh! You knew that Quark and I are dating right? And I haven't told you about the babies yet either, okay, could have handled that one better. I'm sorry.”

“I guess I know now,” he said. “Quark… well.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “You know he's actually very sweet. Usually.”

“No judgement here,” Benjamin put his hands up. “So do you think you'll make it up with him?” 

“I don't know,” she sighed. “Probably. Maybe.”

“Well it's good you know your own mind,” he replied and she kicked his ankle. “Jake said you stayed over with him and Nog last night because you were sad. Why didn't you come see me?”

“Well mainly because it was the middle of the night,” Ezri said. “And I just ran into Jake and he happened to ask, I didn't pick going to his place over seeing you or anything. And besides… I didn't want to burden you with my garbage.” 

“I always have time for your garbage, old man.” Benjamin said. “And it's not so far off some of the things I've helped you with before. It just used to be that _you_ were the Lothario with intimacy issues and trouble communicating instead of the one who had to deal with him.”

“I don't remember you _helping_ me with that,” Ezri wrinkled her brow at him. “Unless you're talking about what I think you're talking about, which wouldn't be a great solution here, you being a married man and all now.” 

“Well, besides _that_ , I talked to the party of the second part mostly,” he replied. “Let them down gently; told it wasn't them, it was just you, that sort of thing.”

“At least someone did,” she said. “God, I was awful. I mean, Curzon was awful. With relationships.”

“Master of the sprint, not so good with the marathon,” he agreed. 

“Better at friendships though?” Ezri said. 

“The best,” Benjamin said. “Or at least top three.”

“ _You_ were the best,” Ezri said. “Curzon was brilliant and charming and funny, but honestly he didn't deserve much better than fair weather friends with the way he behaved. And you were not a fair weather friend.” 

Benjamin shrugged and gestured expansively.

“What can I say? I'm all heart.” he said. “But, be fair, I never let Curzon off the hook for anything I didn't want to tolerate.”

“And he respected you for that,” Ezri agreed. “But I guess from my perspective I wish he'd taken more responsibility instead of needing someone to call him out when he stepped over the line. Which, let's face it, was a lot. I don't know that I would have been friends with him.”

“Well,” Benjamin said with a wry smile. “He was very sweet. Usually.” 

That got him another kick.

“I rescind what I said about you being the best,” she said. 

He smiled more widely. 

“Well, enough about Quark then, what's this about you expecting? And _twins_?”

“Ah, no, not quite. I'm not sure how many there are exactly in there, but we're definitely talking a number with two digits at least.” At Benjamin's look of surprise she continued. “The symbiont inseminated its own eggs.”

“While I can't say I'm not surprised, but that does sound exactly like a Dax manoeuver.” he said. “We can straighten out the details of your leave later, but congratulations, old man!” 

“Thanks,” Ezri said as a surprising warmth spread through her as Benjamin clapped her on the shoulder. “I'd invite you for cigars in the holosuite to celebrate but- well, you know. Me and the proprietor are having that disagreement.”

“It'll still be there when the two of you make it up,” he said.

“Have you really not heard anything through the grapevine yet?” Ezri asked. “Morn must be losing his edge.” 

“If I had known, do you really think I wouldn't have congratulated you sooner?” Benjamin asked reprovingly. 

“I guess not,” Ezri laughed. “I'm sorry I haven't been around much. I've just been caught up in stuff, I suppose. And I haven't really known how to reconnect, if that makes sense. Not because of you, just because of me being ridiculous.”

“Oh?” 

“Well… I've been having a hard time talking about things recently. At first I was going to contact Worf to catch him up about what's been happening with me and the station, like I usually do every week or so, and then I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Talking to him all this and bring the ghost of the family he might have had with Jadzia back into the picture for him? Argh, no.” 

“I see,” Benjamin said. “And, given the way you ran Julian off just now, I'm guessing you've been having this problem with other people as well?”

“More or less,” she said glumly. “Like, the other day Nerys noticed me looking uncomfortable and asked what was wrong and my first instinct was to say that my body didn't seem to know that I didn’t have a baby to drink all this milk it was making, but then I almost bit my tongue in two, because… Yoshi.” 

Benjamin winced sympathetically,

Ezri continued, “So, well, anyway, I guess it's nice to have an unqualified 'that's great!' from somebody. Lately I can't seem to talk about what's going on with me in even a simple, factual way without feeling like I'd be wreaking emotional turmoil in my wake, so I've been hiding to try to spare people from getting involved with my issues. It's not very mature of me. It's good to have a successful conversation about this stuff to throw in my own face the next time I'm being ridiculous.”

“Well I can promise that you're wreaking anything right now,” Benjamin said. “And I don't mind getting involved. ” 

“Thanks,” she said. “To be honest the biggest thing right now is how I'm going to feel about leaving the infant symbionts on Trill and coming back here. There's no guarantee that I'll ever see any of them again. And I miss Quark. I know they're not his babies or anything, but I feel so alone and I really thought that he was going to help me with this. We seemed like we were fine right up until we weren't.” 

“It sounds like you've had more than your own share of emotional turmoil to contend with,” Benjamin said. 

“Well I'm used to it at least,” she laughed shortly and felt tears spill over onto her cheeks. She scrubbed them off with the back of her hand and sniffed loudly. “Ugh, hormones. Is your Bajoran fan club still watching us?”

Benjamin looked around. “They're all looking at the menu with some fervour whenever I try to make eye contact with any of them, so my guess is yes, probably.”

“Great,” she said. 

“Do you want to find somewhere more private to talk?” he asked her. “I take my pastoral duties as the Emissary very seriously, you know.”

“I appreciate it,” Ezri said with a half smile at the joke. “But, no, thanks. I'll be okay. It's not… I'll be fine. It's been good to get off my chest, but I don't want to wallow when I don't know what the solution is.” 

“Are you sure?” he asked. “You've been carrying a lot by yourself.” 

“Yeah, I'm sure,” she said softly and reached out to squeeze his hand. “I love you, Ben, you know that?”

“I do,” he replied and squeezed back. “I love you too. And I'm not the only one; I know you feel like you need to walk on your toes to avoid hurting people just by existing, but you are _so loved_.” 

She felt tears welling up again.

“You've got this ministering to the needy thing down cold,” she said thickly. “And I'm not even a Bajoran.”

“I try,” he smiled. He looked over her shoulder. “I think I'll make a graceful exit now; if I'm not mistaken, there's someone here for you and you might want to talk to _him_ in private. And afterwards maybe we can go for cigars after all.”

She turned around in her seat curiously to look. 

It was Quark.


End file.
